If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You haven't posted anything yet. To participate in our discussions, you can create a new thread of reply to existing ones. We'd love to hear from you and value your WW2 knowledge.

IN the days of lace-ruffles, perukes and brocade
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could despise
An out-spoken, flinty-lipped, brazen-faced jade,
With a habit of looking men straight in the eyes
At Blenheim and Ramillies fops would confess
They were pierced to the heart by the charms of Brown Bess.

Re: Paintings by Adolf Hitler

Some of the work was fairly good, certainly worthy of sale. Many were over simplistic, perhaps earlier stuff. Had he managed to get into an Art college, he may with some dedicated effort,and competent Mentoring have become a successful painter, and now be positively thought of, instead of reviled for his eventual actions. Though in truth, I believe that if it had not been Hitler, it would have been someone else being groomed for the role.

Re: Paintings by Adolf Hitler

Originally Posted by imi

8,9,10,12,15 definitely looks like memoirs from WW1

I agree, I like those better than the other better rendered pictures. Battlefield art is in my opinion more telling than photographic images. There is greater emotion in them, an additional dimension, even if they are child like in their rendering.

Re: Paintings by Adolf Hitler

Hitler was by no means an inspired artist, but some of what is shown here is perfectly acceptable as street, or tourist art. Sometimes its the flaws that make an image interesting, and tell the story a little bit better.

Re: Paintings by Adolf Hitler

Didn't Hitler have sort of a severe weakness and an artist, like the inability to show depth or something? Of the work, his art is passable and decent I must admit. Did anyone ever actually bother to try to loot it?

Re: Paintings by Adolf Hitler

Loot it? hmm, I'm guessing by the end of the war, the only place his work would have been hung (no pun intended) would be a place such as this, and not as much for esthetic appreciation, as practical application. .

Re: Paintings by Adolf Hitler

It is a problem, trying to assess Hitler's talent as an artist. The judgment of his inadequacy on the part of the admission authorities at the Vienna Academy can hardly be relied on in concluding that he was a "failed artist". After all, while many of our greatest visual artists did serve some form of apprenticeship, far from all received anything approximating to an "academic education". Of prominent artists who did, the effect may have been as likely to stultify their talent rather than enhance it. The second problem is that Hitler gave up painting and drawing at a relatively early age in favour of politics; Hitler has no "mature" and "late" period. A third problem is that the quality of his early work varies significantly, depending on whether he was painting postcards and "views of Vienna" and such for direct sale to tourists, or whether he was producing more considered works for sale to, or through, the (mainly Jewish) patrons and galleries with whom he had dealings. The result is that his surviving oeuvre is immature and uneven in quality.

The Vienna academicians did identify one feature of Hitler's works that has also been commented upon by modern critics (some on blind/anonymous viewing) - his striking lack of interest in people, and in the human figure. It is not, IMHO, that he was not competent in representing the human figure. The truth is that he has left little conclusive evidence of whether he could paint people or not, because people are either absent or sparsely represented in his paintings and drawings. Thus, his impressive trench art is usually totally bereft of actual human beings; and his post-WW1 work is dominated by architectural representation in which humans are either dominated by the built environment, or absent from it. Without wishing to get heavy on the psychology, this probably does reflect a strong architectural/theatrical sense, allied to misanthropy and human objectification, which may go a long way to explaining some of his activities in the political sphere. I am attaching (software permitting) an image of a watercolour of Hitler's dated 1910. This is of a rustic bridge of stones, with a human figure sitting to its left. The figure is curious, given that it is actually labeled as himself by the artist, while the figure itself is insignificant (by reference to the bridge) and anonymous; without the label, one could certainly not tell that it represented anybody in particular.

Whether Hitler would have developed into a more human/live creature orientated artist with maturity, we shall never know. As an artist, he never reached maturity. Two points, however, are evident. First, he definitely had a raw talent as an architectural illustrator; whether he would ever have made an architect (a possibility precluded by his neglect of his school studies) is, again, unknowable. Secondly, he had the raw talent to make a competent artist - perhaps a lot better than that. Again, we shall never know whether this might have been realized. Best regards, JR.